tation. The terzetto, Deh tu ci assisti, which is sung, as is usual, in prayers and invocations, without accompaniment, is finely harmonized, and is remarkable for its well constructed fugue. The gipsey song, Ahi giovinetta sventurata, is an instance of the charming taste which Garcia shows in all his lighter compositions, and the first finale is full of life, variety, and character. Oh per Bacco Signor mio is a sprightly little air, and was well sung by Signora Garcia.* The duetto L'oro Carletto, between Rosich and young Garcia, is composed in excellent comic style, and was very well received by the audience. Son Maestro di Cappella gave the elder Garcia, whose personation of Raimondo in this opera admits of no improvement, a fair opportunity of showing the versatile powers of his voice, an opportunity of which he availed himself with the greatest effect. But the quintetto Bel piacere was decidedly the favourite piece, and was encored with the most tumultuous applause. Rosich acts in this as well as the Signorina sings, which is as high praise as he can receive. In the second finale, Garcia seems to have laid out all his strength in the production of a rich and brilliant melody, for the purpose of showing off his daughter's unrivalled powers. We regret to say, that on both nights of this opera, (either in consequence of indisposi tion, or of the length and difficulty of the preceding part, or for some other cause with which we are not acquainted,) this young lady was so completely exhausted before she had even begun the finale, that, in spite of her admirable performance of many striking passages of extraordinary elegance and difficulty, we witnessed the exhibition of her astonishing execution, with infinitely less of pleasure, than of painful sympathy with what appeared to us to be a very dangerous determination to go resolutely through with an oppressive and unnecessary task. Some parts of this opera, it must be confessed, are cold; the terzetto in the introduction had no effect; the spoken dialogue, in place of musical recitative, is flat and unimpressive; and a spirited air of Carletto's, Che m' importa che faccia la fiera, is ruined by its abrupt and frigid termination. But these are trifling faults, and are ten thousand times repaid by the numerous beauties of the composition. For ourselves, (shall we frankly confess it?) we were incomparably more affected by the air in the ninth scene, (as sung by Signorina Garcia,) Ah per pietà cedete! than by any thing of the same kind we recol

*In this air, which is in 6-8 time, there is introduced an anomalous bar of three crotchets, which is several times repeated. It has a curious, but we do not think a pleasing effect.

lect ever to have heard. The melody itself seems to be the very language of the tenderest entreaty, and nothing can be imagined more irresistibly touching than the powerful pathos with which it was sung. The humble attitude, low at her father's feet, the earnest and desperate clinging to her father's cloak, the upward look of innocent supplication as long as there is hope, and then, when there is none, the bowing of the head to the very ground in misery and despair; all this together formed the most beautiful dramatic picture we have ever looked upon; while the tears of the rejected suppliant, (for in this scene we believe she actually sheds tears,) no less than the plaintive tones of an exquisite contralto, successfully exerting all the wonderful power which voices of that quality have above all others of moving the affections, made upon the minds of the whole audience a deep and indelible impression, such as the drama, we seriously believe, without the aid of music, could never have produced.*

We ought next to speak of Tancredi, one of the most imposing, if not one of the most original of Rossini's compositions. Of this opera there have been five representations, and to judge from the full and fashionable houses it has attracted every night, it promises to be an established favourite with the audience. It was our intention in this paper, to state what we consider to be the respective merits of Signorina Garcia as Tancredi, and Madame Barbieri as Amenaide, with some remarks upon the more interesting airs, and pezzi concertati. We should, at the same time, have taken the opportunity to express our admiration of Garcia's masterly personation of Argirio, and should have given a hearty tribute of praise to the two truly splendid drop scenes, designed and painted by Signor Ferri; but the necessary limits of our articles make it impossible for us to enter upon these subjects for the present.

* Part of the effect of this air is owing to the introduction of a beautiful chromatic passage, which, difficult as it is, was sung to perfection by Miss Garcia, apparently without the smallest effort. This produced, as it always does, when skilfully thrown in, an effect absolutely electrical, felt, perhaps, most sensibly, by those whose little knowledge of the rules of music made them ignorant of the artifice by which it was brought about.

FROM THE SPANISH.

1.

HERE will I make my home-for here at least I see, Upon this wild Sierra's side, the steps of Liberty;

Where the locust chirps unscared beneath the unpruned lime, And the merry bee doth hide from man the spoil of the moun

tain thyme;

Where the pure winds come and go,

will,

and the wild vine gads at

An outcast from the haunts of men she dwells with Nature still.

II.

I see the valleys, Spain! where thy mighty rivers run,
And the hills that lift thy harvests and vineyards to the sun,
And the flocks that drink thy brooks and sprinkle all the green,
Where lie thy plains, with sheep-walks seamed, and olive shades
between :

I see thy fig-trees bask, with the fair pomegranate near,
And the fragrance of thy lemon groves can almost reach me here.

III.

Fair-fair-but fallen Spain! 'tis with a swelling heart, That I think on all thou might'st have been, and look at what thou art;

But the strife is over now-and all the good and brave,

That would have raised thee up, are gone, to exile or the grave. Thy fleeces are for monks, thy grapes for the convent feast, And the wealth of all thy harvest-fields for the pampered lord and priest.

IV.

But I shall see the day-it will come before I die

I shall see it in my silver hairs, and with an age-dimmed eye;When the spirit of the land to liberty shall bound,

As yonder fountain leaps away from the darkness of the ground;, And, to my mountain cell, the voices of the free

Shall rise, as from the beaten shore the thunders of the sea.

B.

AN APOLOGY FOR AN ESSAY.

"Out upon time" (albeit a sage reviewer of the East, or North, or Northeast, quarrels with the phrase, as quaint, and low, and antiquated)-out upon time, and the Reviewer toothe one for a thief, and the other for a jackass. Time was, when the writing of an essay or a story, of an ode or an elegy, cost no more labour than that of directing the goosequill over the foolscap; and happy was the compositor who could read, happy the reader who could understand, happy, thrice happy the author who had created the buoyant extempore product. But Time, the superannuated old felon,-will steal

"Fire from the mind, as vigour from the limb;"

or, in other words, judgment, that some persons, (such as Yankee schoolmasters, and new fledged dominies and doctors,) are said to have from childhood, and which others acquire at earlier or later periods, or perhaps never-sober judgment has got on her gown and wig; and will hear no motions, not fortified by sufficient facts, properly attested. She values not a rush the most forgetive ingenuity, employed upon untenable premises; but dismisses the subject as the court does a frivolous demurrer. She cares no more for tropes and similies, than Æsop's rooster did for the pearl on the dunghill; but knits her brows, and looks as ugly as Sam Johnson, in the Dublin edition of his lives of the poets; and declares, in his own language, that a "metaphor is no argument." Oh sober judgment! what have I to do with thee? yovn; (for feminine thou must be, according to all the rules and practice of legitimate personification-so that the wisest of us are under petticoat government after all.) What hast thou done for me, or mine outward estate, or mine inward intellectual economy, that thou shouldest thus tyrannize over the exercitations of fancy, clap thine injunctions on the cacoethes scribendi, and issue thy ne exeats against the most formidable conceptions, that ever shook the diaphragm of a sensible man with laughter, or fulmined over the heads of the groundlings, to their utter dismay and consternation? I say, what have I gained, and what have I lost by thee? Hast thou put money my purse; or passed over to me the fee simple of lands and tenements? Do people come to me to borrow money on good security or go to the register's office to search for titles through or in me? Too well thou knowest what a waste of time and trouble that would be! Or hast thou produced in me any near approximation to the philosophical desideratum-the sublime quietude of the soul-the mens sana in corpore sano?

in

VOL. II.

31

Hast

thou bade "peace of mind" to "build her downy nest" in the tabernacle of my thoughts, or even provided lodgings there for the interesting nymph, indifference? Right well thou knowest, that, though the visions of childhood have vanished like a dream of the morning, or the sparkling dew, or glittering hoar frost, or any other evanescent particulars, to which they have ever been compared for the sake of rhyme or reason, no more tangible objects have succeeded, to embellish the dim perspective of hope. Right well thou knowest how, though thy sage visage scowls at and disapproves many an action, yet in defiance of thy jurisdiction, I am drawn still like a child by the magnetism of the momentary power

"Video meliora proboque,
Deteriora sequor."

Thou hast provided a compass-but the will, that untrustworthy pilot, still holds the helm; thou hast given me no anchors to heave out in a squall; and the STAR that should be an unerring guide, burns yet for me with pale, and ineffectual, and often overclouded fire. But I have no right to twit thee with that the quarrel is with Beelzebub and the flesh-and my apostrophe

"To subjects too solemn insensibly tends."

How much have I not lost by thee, then, O judgment, matron stern-who, sitting in thy curule chair, art as indifferent to coming contingencies, as the Roman senator in the empty forum, when the barbarians were thronging through the gatesor, as he in the sable cap, who announces thy penal requisitions to the convicted felon; and commends the ingredients of the poisoned chalice to his lips-now with a stale joke, and now with a staler scrap of morality, as he happens to be in the mood. What have I not lost by thee, O judgment?

I am sorry that I began by railing at father Time. I acquit him of half the charge I intended to bring against him. He has stolen, to be sure, "i fiori di miei bei anni," swept away the garlands of childhood--lifted up the veil from the scenes where innocence was bliss-taken away the privileges of those, perhaps, happier hours, when the half-initiate romps and frolics in the gardens and pleasure-houses, to which he is admitted by accident, or on probation, or out of curiosity in the keepers-destroyed the illusions of those fairy scenes, and written his Ichabod on the gate of the enchanted palace. Aye, he has done worse he has sent to the cold and unanswering grave, those whom we loved best, and for best cause. Over some the green turf and the recording stones have been heaped, and